Newly released documents reveal violent past for man who died in custody of Amherst deputies

By Chris Dumond

Published: August 23, 2008

A man who died while in the custody of Amherst County Sheriff’s deputies in 2005 was acquitted by reason of insanity in a 1997 Richmond homicide and committed to a state mental hospital, newly released records show.

Sanchez Taylor’s death is at issue in a $15 million wrongful death lawsuit against four Amherst deputies accused of suffocating him during an arrest in June 2005.

Hundreds of pages of records were filed in the federal civil suit in advance of hearings last week. Thursday, the lawyer for the deputies asked Judge Norman Moon to throw out the case, and Friday, lawyers sought to settle the case in a mediation hearing.

Moon had not filed a decision in Thursday’s hearing, nor had any settlement filings been made as of late Friday. The suit is scheduled to go to trial next month.

The hearings came a week after a special commonwealth’s attorney filed a report in state court clearing the deputies of criminal wrongdoing.

According to the newly filed documents:

- Taylor was released from a state mental hospital in 2003 and was being monitored at the time of his death by the Central Virginia Community Services Board;

- Deputies say no one handled the man in a way to restrict his breathing and that they used the least amount of force possible to get him under control;

- Dr. Gregory Wanger, the medical examiner who autopsied Taylor, said the injuries that suffocated him were caused by the deputies, although they may not have intended to kill him or have known what they were doing to him was hurting him, and;

- Medical experts hired by the deputies have filed reports stating Taylor’s death was an accident, though the judge has ruled the medical experts can’t testify should the case go to trial in mid-September.

According to law enforcement statements filed with the court, Taylor was seen on June 16, 2005, running away from his car, which he had parked in the passing lane of U.S. 29 in Amherst County. Within minutes, a witness called police to report Taylor appeared to be trying to break into Bethel Welding, a nearby business.

Shortly after, deputies Debbie Tinnell and Darren Givens found Taylor at the back of the welding shop and tried to arrest him. They say Taylor fought them, although he was handcuffed on a metal ladder. When they tried to carry him off the ladder, he continued to fight, they say, and he was put down on a metal rack. Then, two more deputies, Brian Drewry and Kelly Dodson, arrived and helped pick up Taylor, still fighting.

A few feet later, still unable to get him under control, the officers put him on the ground. As a fifth deputy, Betty Wise, came on the scene, deputies noticed Taylor was having trouble breathing and was having a seizure.

Taylor never recovered and died within two hours.

His mother’s lawyer contends the deputies held him down on the ladder and metal rack despite her assertion that he was clearly having a mental episode. She contends they crushed his stomach, suffocating him and starting a chain reaction inside his body that killed him.

Richmond Circuit Court records show Taylor was indicted in 1997 on charges of murder, attempted murder and two related gun crimes in the shooting death of his friend, 22-year-old Carey Hughley III. According to a court record filed by a defense medical expert, Taylor shot Hughley in an attempt to “recycle the victim’s soul into heaven.”

A year later, Taylor was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a Richmond judge. He was subsequently committed to Central State Hospital in Petersburg, court documents show.

A few days after the fifth anniversary of the killing, the court ordered Taylor to be released under strict supervision by the Central Virginia Community Services Board here in Lynchburg, where his parents and grandmother lived.

During her deposition, Lynn McBride, a Central Virginia Community Services counselor who worked with Taylor, said he had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the disorder can include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, catatonic behavior, major depression and mania.

She said he occasionally discussed the 1997 killing and admitted he was responsible.

Under community services care, he was first given his medicine at his home by a staff member twice a day to make sure he was taking it, McBride said. Some time later, he was allowed to take his morning dosage on his own because he would leave for work before a community services worker could meet him.

By January 2005, though, things were starting to break down, McBride said. Community services then wrote a letter to the Richmond court asking for Taylor to be warned about compliance. When there was no response, another letter was written in March.

According to court records, this resulted in a hearing in May, the month before his death, in which Taylor was given another 90 days to comply with the conditions of his release.

A note written by McBride in Taylor’s file, referenced in the deposition, notes that McBride and Taylor’s mother were confused by the circumstances of his death since he had a good session with counselors the day before.

McBride also told the lawyers that Taylor had always tested clean in drug screens leading up to his death in spite of the fact that he tested positive for low levels of cocaine when he was admitted to the hospital.

In addition to cocaine found in his car, a large quantity of his psychiatric medicine was found as well, McBride noted in Taylor’s file.

“Sanchez had a month’s worth of meds, but (I) don’t know over what period he didn’t take them,” she wrote.

Statements of the five deputies who participated in Taylor’s arrest note that none of them had any history with the man or were aware of his medical or legal background.

Of the four who handled Taylor, their statements all note that the man fought with them continuously, did not comply with their orders, that he did not speak through the entire encounter and that they did not crush him or do anything to suffocate him.

The statements all note that the deputies did the least they could to restrain Taylor and get him under control. Those statements go on to note that when Taylor appeared to be having problems, his handcuffs were taken off and that deputies who were trained as emergency medical providers tried to help him.

Inmore than 60 pages of transcribed deposition, Dr. Gregory Wanger, the Roanoke-based state medical examiner who autopsied Taylor, said there were clear signs of restraint and suffocation. Wanger assigned Taylor’s cause and manner of death as homicide and suffocation due to multiple restraints with cocaine abuse and heart disease as contributing factors.

Wanger said deep tissues inside Taylor’s belly showed bruising and evidence of compression. He said compression like this could have kept Taylor’s diaphragm from flattening enough to let him breathe.

“This comes as a surprise to some people,” Wanger said. “Even though their mouth and their nose and so on is open, they can’t breathe.”

He also noted that not everyone with this kind of injury dies right away, but instead the suffocation causes a “cascade” of events resulting in death, especially considering his other medical problems.

Although defense experts attribute Taylor’s death to a condition called excited delirium, Wanger denied it was involved in this case because of evidence Taylor’s abdomen was compressed while he was on the ladder and metal racks.

In the deposition, he said the ruling of homicide did not imply the deputies meant to kill Taylor, just that he died at the hands of another.

He said he couldn’t put himself in the shoes of those deputies, but if he could, he would have expected Taylor to be making some noise while he was on the metal racks.

“And the fact that you are not able to make a noise and you’re maybe making some mumbling noises, I guess, in my head, I would say, ‘well, you know, do we’ve got an airway problem or what?’ I mean, there is something going on,” he said.

“But I have medical training they don’t have.”

Two medical doctors consulted by the deputies’ lawyer filed reports that contradict the official medical examiner’s findings.

Dr. Edward Gordon, a medical examiner from Farmville hired by the defense attorney, stated he doesn’t believe Taylor could have fought as hard as he did with police if he was being suffocated.

Instead, Gordon reported, Taylor died of excited delirium, a fatal combination of problems brought on by the stress of resisting arrest, the man’s mental illness, cocaine use, high cholesterol and the heart disease found during the autopsy.

Dr. Daniel Davis, a state medical examiner in Oregon, reached a similar conclusion and also noted that if he had been suffocated while struggling on the ladder and metal planters at Bethel Welding, he would not have been able to continue struggling with the deputies after they tried to drag him away.

An Aug. 6 order by Judge Moon is likely to keep the medical experts for the deputies from testifying and disputing Wanger’s findings.

An earlier court order gave the deputies until late March to file a list of expert witnesses, but they did not file until June 30, Moon found.

Under the judge’s order a former FBI agent hired by the deputies to review the case would also be barred from testifying about his conclusion that they did nothing wrong.